The paintings in Mordecai's "Missing Letter" series respond to a teaching, described in a 13th-century Kabbalistic text, that a letter is missing from the Hebrew alphabet, whose eventual arrival into language will transform and perfect humanity. One interpretive tradition holds that the shape resembling a four-pronged shin (ש) on the phylactery worn above the forehead during prayer is that letter of myth, that “unimaginable consonant whose sound will create undreamed of words and worlds, transforming repression into loving.”† Mordecai‘s engagement with this ancient story is both example and testimony to the work of artists to conjure the powers of beauty and wisdom into near-magical fabrications that affect all who can experience them.

† Lawrence Kushner, The Book of Letters, 2d ed. 1990, Woodstock VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, pp13–14.